Girl’s Revenge is a Mandarin-language Taiwanese movie directed by Weica Wang, written by Blanche Chiang and starring Wang Yu-ping, Yuri Chen, Pii Liu and Shiny Yao.
Campus politics
Girl’s Revenge is a pretty simple, straightforward revenge thriller/drama that doesn’t get into too many twists and turns. I like watching movies like these which are entertaining, sometimes kinda cute and does not make you think too much. Although there is a little twist that you might be able to figure out beforehand, it still does surprise you well enough.
So, Girl’s Revenge follows Wu Yun-heng, a transfer student, who becomes friends with Ren Li-cha in her new school. However, after an unfortunate incident at party results in a terrible situation, Yun-heng decides to take revenge on behalf of her friend.
As I was saying, Girl’s Revenge is a pretty simple movie, but it does keep you entertained throughout. The movie, which is only 1-hour 21-minutes long focuses on Yun-heng getting acclimated to her new school in the first half and then focuses on the revenge aspect in the second. The first half is quite sweet, with the story flowing seamlessly and with many heartfelt moments. We see a lot of Yun-hung, her friend Li-cha and their manipulative classmate Wang Ke-chien.
The second half, on the other hand, focuses on Yun-heng trying to gather evidence and doing whatever she can to get justice for her friend. Sometimes we get to see a peek of a dark secret that looms over Yun-heng’s mind, something that happened in her previous school. However, we don’t get to know the extent of it till the end. The second half is quite an entertainer as well, with Yun-heng running pillar to post to find out what happened.
Girl’s Revenge takes a look at the internet community, our youth who take everything to the internet and how kids these days act on the campus. It also throws light on bullying, and how the authorities take no note of it. There are also various cliques in the movie that represent everything we have seen before in movies such as these. The storyline is cliched, sure, and talks about things we’ve already seen before. However, as I said, it’s a movie that does not require much thinking and creates with it’s old storyline something quite convincing.
The movie does a good job showing power dynamics, especially between the various cliques in the school. It starts off with a tragic event, goes back to how it all started, and then picks up where it left off in the beginning. It’s a style of storytelling we have seen before many times, but it works for Girl’s Revenge because director Weica Wang and writer Blanche Chiang do not introduce too many plot points or twists that might make the movie drag. The simple premise works in its favour.
However, Girl’s Revenge does not really give a lot of motivation to its principle characters to exact revenge. There’s a character who comes into the picture and Yun-heng starts doing everything with him from that point on, but we don’t know why he goes so deep into the whole thing. Relationships and lacklustre character developments like these take a little way from the overall engagement of the movie.
The acting’s pretty good in the movie, with Yuri Chen and Wang Yu-ping getting the most out of their roles. Yuri Chen’s Wang Ke-chien has a few layers to her, and Chen plays the cool-headed manipulator with ease. On the other hand, Wang Yu-ping, too, does a good job as the quiet transfer student with a sordid past. Although everyone else is also good, it’s these two who have the most screen presence and display natural performances.
Summing up: Girl’s Revenge
Girl’s Revenge is a tale of vicious campus lives in the wake of the internet. The movie tries to shower its audiences with various moral lessons and weaves it into the narrative pretty well. It’s well-executed, looks good, and it’s highly entertaining.
Girl’s Revenge is streaming on Netflix.
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